The Nursing Beat is Changing How Healthcare Information is Absorbed

The Nursing Beat is Changing How Healthcare Information is Absorbed

The Nursing Beat, a new healthcare media startup, officially launched this week. It’s the creation of a consortium of nurses sharing a strong desire to foster community with the goal to make  the ever-evolving world of healthcare easy to digest by arming healthcare professionals with the most up-to-date information. 

the-nursing-beat

Nurses Supporting Community Initiatives 

 As an organization, it stands by its words and acts within its community to support initiatives imperative to nurse retention and workforce sustainability.

According to Hannah Berns, MHCI, BSN, RN, and COO of The Nursing Beat, they attended the Nurses March on Washington in May 2022 to advocate for safe staffing and anti-violence measures. They also recently launched Pulse Check, a professional consulting program offering various career development services, from panel interview preparation to entrepreneurial consultations, to help nurses establish their professional identity and maximize their career potential.

With thousands of subscribers and a growing following on TikTok, The Nursing Beat is changing how healthcare information is absorbed.

Magic Behind The Startup

The startup’s leadership team is almost entirely composed of nurses. From their Advisory Board which was established in conjunction with The Nurses on Board Coalition, to their executive team. They speak to their audience authentically in a language familiar to their community. #ByNursesForNurses.

As The Nursing Beat says, healthcare starts with you. This is your beat.

4 Quick and Effective Job Interview Tips

4 Quick and Effective Job Interview Tips

Do you ever wonder what makes one job candidate stand out enough in a job interview to actually get hired?

Being the best job candidate you can be takes time, effort, and a lot of preparation on your part. Now is the time when you have to raise your game so you become the job prospect who gets hired. Truth be told, you probably feel a little worn out after submitting your resume to many job openings and you’re just ready to get through this final step. Maybe you think your grad experience or your resume and exceptional work experience should speak for themselves—you know you’ve got what it takes to be part of their team.

The job interview has many layers. Yes, it’s about making sure you would be a good candidate who can do the job well. Any organization wants to know they have hired someone who is qualified, reliable, and professionally competent. But another layer of the interview is to see if you would fit in with the culture and mission of the organization.

Nurses know each workplace has a slightly different environment and work culture. Depending on the unit, the shift, and the established work guidelines, nurses will find they thrive better in one organization than another. That’s a natural part of any workplace and finding the right fit is something that can’t be found on a resume. Interviewers hope they can ask questions to understand how your background, personality, work expectations, work ethic, and training will help advance their team and provide their patients with the best care.

How can you prepare for that kind of pressure?

  1. Find Out More

Do a little investigating of your own before heading to a job interview. Understand the culture of the organization and find out how the teams work. Look at LinkedIn profiles, check out social media posts, and read up on the place’s history. Find out all you possibly can. No interviewer wants to explain a company to an interviewee. They expect you will come with an understanding of what they do and why.

  1. Understand What You Can Do for Them

If you’re applying for a job, an organization knows it can help you fill that immediate need. As an interviewee, you’re in the position where you need to sell yourself. Successful job candidates know you can’t just sell yourself by relaying all your accomplishments. Telling your interviewer about everything that’s on your resume isn’t the best use of anyone’s time. They have your resume—now they want to find out what you can do to help them. Where will you fit in and why will that help that healthcare organization be better? That’s what any interviewer wants to know. Don’t make them dig for that information in a job interview.

  1. Don’t Throw Away Your Shot

If you think you have only one chance to get something right, you’ll do your best. Well, this is your one shot to get it right. Today’s job interviewers don’t have time to coddle an interviewee. They want you to be prepared, to be dressed appropriately, to have any materials you need, to have references ready to go, and to be ready to answer their questions thoughtfully and thoroughly.

  1. Don’t Leave the Obvious Unsaid

You might think your five years on NICU will help you land this new role in a similar unit. You might be right, but do you want to leave that to chance? If two interviewees have the same experience, be the one who can demonstrate with anecdotes and proven results. Choose a few of your accomplishments in your last role and be ready to talk about how those results helped your last organization and also how it helped you professionally. Don’t assume your resume tells your story. The resume is the headline—the interview is the rest of the story.

Before you head to your next job interview, take some time for preparation and see what kind of a difference it makes in your interview process.

7 Ways to Build Relationships with Patients

7 Ways to Build Relationships with Patients

New nurse graduates have a lot on their plate. With diploma in hand, they can barely shout a celebratory “woo hoo” before passing the NCLEX becomes the next focus. But this early time in your nursing career is an especially important time to begin laying the foundation of the kind of nurse you want to be.

Nursing students often say connecting with patients is what makes their long days worthwhile. No matter what population you will be working with, finding a way to bridge the gap and connect with patients makes your job easier and builds confidence and satisfaction for your patients.

Here are a few ways to start building relationships—whether they last for hours or years—it makes a difference.

1. Introduce Yourself

Your patients have medical professionals coming in and out of their rooms all day long. Don’t take it personally if they don’t remember your name or when you first came in or even what you need to do. Tell them your name and what you will be doing. Let them know how long you’ll be taking care of them.

2. Be Present

With all the hectic happenings in a healthcare setting, nurses have to have eyes and ears open to everything. Sometimes that means when you are with a patient, you aren’t 100 percent focused on them. Making the effort to bring your attention to the patient in front of you helps. “Be present in the moment,” advises Pamela Chally, Dean Emeritus, Brooks College of Health, University of North Florida. “Even something nonverbal does a lot for being present. It can be a touch or eye contact,” she says.

3. Keep Them Updated

Let your patients know what to expect. If you know they’ll have a CAT scan later in the day, let them know the approximate time. If that time changes, pass that information along. They might have questions about what’s going on and why they need certain tests or procedures. Let them know or, if you don’t know all the details, find out for them.

4. Spend Some Time

This is the most difficult piece because time is one thing nurses don’t have to spare. But making the most of your time with a patient can help overcome the quantity of the time you can offer. You can’t sit in the room and chat the afternoon away, but you can ask them about their outside life. Talk about the latest baseball game, their scrapbooking habit, or what they like about their job.

5. Learn About Them

If they have family in the room, try to learn a little about them and about your patient as well. Be mindful if a family doesn’t want to talk, but also listen for small details that aren’t volatile. Hobbies, favorite places, favorite foods, or upcoming events they are looking forward to are all great ways to connect and will help break the ice.

6. Have Patience

In addition to their professional skill and their calm demeanor, nurses’ patience is legendary. But having patience isn’t always easy, and when you have patients who are scared, in pain, or just not particularly pleasant, it can be downright difficult. Watch the nurses around you to see what coping techniques they have developed to deal when tempers flare in your setting. Do they deflect with questions? Do they ignore the situation and continue on calmly or do they address it directly? What does your manager recommend when you encounter a situation that’s not easy? And find your own way of bringing yourself back to a calm place when things get tough.

7. Make It Personal

With so many people to care for, it’s not going to be easy to remember small details about everyone. But if you can remember your patient is especially nervous about blood draws, has very particular food preferences or issues, or is more modest than most (or not!), you can be prepared for those situations. Showing that you care about them as a person will help build a mutual trust.

Building relationships with patients, no matter what setting you see them in, has a ripple effect. You’ll make their stay or visit more pleasant, but you’ll also feel more satisfaction from having connected with them, too. And if your patient trusts you and feels like you are advocating for their interests, they are more likely to listen to what you say and ask questions when they don’t understand something.

Building a relationship with a patient can lead them on a path to better health overall and a better quality of life—what nurse doesn’t want that?

Why Gender Diversity in the Workforce Matters

Why Gender Diversity in the Workforce Matters

At Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the number of male nursing students seeking a master’s degree is reason to celebrate.
“At the beginning of this semester, a faculty member said, ‘I just did an assessment of our new cohort and 15% of the incoming class are men, and it’s the most we’ve had in a cohort,’” says Sheldon D. Fields, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, AACRN, FNAP, FAANP, dean of the Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing.
But gender diversity is just part of the story at the historically black and Hispanic graduate institution based in South Central Los Angeles. “Not only is our male student population up, I also only have minority male students in my program,” says Fields, who previously served as an assistant dean and codirector of the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program in the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Florida International University. At that Miami school—a historically Hispanic institution—the male nursing enrollment is much higher at 30%.
Such historically diverse schools of nursing are key to getting more men of color into the nursing pipeline, says Fields. “Minority-serving institutions, I think, stand a better chance of attracting men because we are more flexible and we don’t have those historically traditional ways of looking at who should and who could be a nurse.”

Increasing Gender Diversity
Today, one out of 10 nurses is a male. And while more men are resisting stereotypes and increasingly pursuing a career in the most trusted health profession, many more are needed not only to achieve gender parity, but also to reflect the nation’s demographics, says William T. Lecher, RN, DNP, MBA, NE-BC, immediate past president of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN).


AAMN has aligned its goals to improve gender diversity with the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine nursing report, which stated that to improve the quality of patient care, more efforts are needed to increase the diversity of the nursing workforce, especially in the areas of gender, race, and ethnicity.
“Our patients and families know the important role men in nursing play in meeting their nursing and health care needs. For example, The DAISY Award is provided by almost 2,000 health care facilities and celebrates and honors the extraordinary compassion and direct care nurses provide to patients and families every day,” says Lecher, senior clinical director at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“The DAISY Foundation has found that men are recognized by patients, families, and health team members two to three times the rate they are employed. Or, in other words, the patient and family experience benefits by having men in the nursing workforce. As such, our patients, families, and health care administrators should demand our nursing schools do a better job recruiting and retaining more men in nursing school. It is hard to believe that, in this day and age, men in nursing school only account for 12% of students [as of 2012] and their attrition continues about twice the rate of women in nursing programs,” says Lecher.
According to a report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2014-2015 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, men comprised 11.7% of students in baccalaureate programs, 10.8% of master’s students, 9.6% of research-focused doctoral students, and 11.7% of practice-focused doctoral students. One of AAMN’s goals is to have men make up 20% of nursing student enrollment by 2020.
To encourage schools of nursing to support its male students, AAMN has created the Excellence in Nursing Education Environments Supportive of Men program, a recognition designed to provide evidence to stakeholders that a specific program is gender-inclusive. Recognition symbolizes excellence in providing male students a positive and equitable educational environment as determined by AAMN.
The program’s goals include increasing awareness of issues that may challenge the success of male student nurses, fostering the recruitment and retention of men as nursing students, and recognizing nursing education programs that have achieved excellence in supporting male students. Recognition is valid for eight years. Schools interested in applying can do so at AAMN.org.
Increasing the gender diversity of students to create a workforce prepared to meet the demands of diverse populations requires schools of nursing to do a better job of recruiting and retaining male students, says Marianne Baernholdt, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, professor and director of the Langston Center for Quality, Safety, and Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
“You won’t find a school of nursing today… that wouldn’t say we do everything we can to increase minorities in nursing and that includes men. If you are not going to put money or specific actions behind [these goals] well, you will just keep doing what you are doing,” Baernholdt says. At VCU, men are 12.5% of the undergraduate nursing school enrollment, she adds.
VCU offers several entryways into nursing, including the RN-to-BSN program, and an accelerated bachelor’s degree program. “Because we have that mix, I think we have a higher proportion of male students. But VCU is known for its diversity, so that’s another reason we also have as many African Americans as we have males. Does that mean we could do better? Of course, we need to do even better,” says Baernholdt.

Growing Numbers
From 2010 to 2013, the number of male RNs increased from 8% to 10.7%. During that three-year period, an additional 70,000 male nurses entered the workforce, increasing their number to over 300,000. Since the 1970s, the percentage of male nurses has more than tripled.
The profession’s low unemployment, a desire to make a difference, and a shift in how male nurses are viewed are among the reasons men are entering nursing, experts say.
“The increased visibility of AAMN and men in other nursing organizations make it easier for men to see themselves as nurses,” says Lecher. “Furthermore, the recent recession has helped men choose nursing as a way to help others, have purpose and meaning in their work, and earn good income for their families.”
Alexandra Robbins, author of The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital, agrees. “I think they are increasingly drawn to the profession as the stigma and stereotypes wane and as more men realize just how hands-on a nursing career can be,” she says.
Fueling the growth of male nurses are innovative initiatives, including programs that train foreign-educated physicians—who cannot practice in this country—to become nurses, says Fields. The number of returning military veterans is another factor. “There are several medic-to-RN programs around the country, and the VA has put money into continuing education for vets, and a large number of them are coming into nursing,” says Fields, noting that the military is disproportionately higher in men.

Pay Disparity
While male nurses are the minority, they still earn more money than women in the same role.
A report published earlier this year in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the average female nurse earns about $5,100 less than her male counterpart—even when researchers controlled for factors such as race, age, marital status, and specialty. The uneven wages also varied significantly by specialty. The highest salary gap was for nurse anesthetists, a role held by many men.
“I don’t think what we’re seeing should surprise anybody because we live in a country that has a pay disparity between men and women, with men making more money,” says Fields. “In nursing, there is a slightly larger number of men who pursue an administrative role, and they tend to work in critical care roles, which requires more credentials and pay more money,” he adds. Men seemed to be promoted quicker, too.
The bottom line? “In America, we have a patriarchal society that says men are worth more,’’ says Fields.
The salary gaps are dismaying but may not be as widespread as the study suggests, says Peter McMenamin, PhD, senior policy fellow and health economist at the American Nurses Association.
The challenge is in the data, which included information that stretched back more than 10 years, when there were fewer male nurses. Also, the wage differences are not explained but may include women who took time off to have children and, so, lost their place in the labor force and never caught up. Or, the data could include male nurses who worked two or more jobs, which meant their total compensation increased, explains McMenamin.
“So there are all these little things that suggest it’s not as simple as taking the average wage for men and women in the same category” because of other issues, including training and experience, says McMenamin. Still, he is dismayed that the differentials exist. “We’d like to live in a world where experience and education were the primary determinant of compensation…but gender alone should not.”
Gender diversity may help to resolve the uneven wages, says Lecher. “Gender occupational segregation does not promote wage advancement in nursing or any other occupation. A more gender-diverse workforce will benefit the wage potential for all nurses.”
While that remains to be seen, gender diversity improves culture competence and outcome for patients, says Elliot Brooks, senior vice president of human resources at MJHS, one of the largest health systems in the greater New York area.
“New York is one of the most diverse cities in the world. At MJHS, we believe that our employee population should reflect, understand, and respect the diversity of this great city. That doesn’t just extend to gender; it also means culture, faith, tradition, ethnicity, sexual orientation, et cetera. Our anecdotal qualitative research shows that our patients, of any background, appreciate receiving care from nurses who are culturally sensitive. This enhances care management, goal setting, and having difficult conversations. But, the benefits go beyond those important things,” Brooks says.

Amplifying Voices
Patients are more likely to open up “about their personal lives, dreams, hopes, and challenges,” Brooks continues. “By extending compassion, dignity, and respect to our patients, we are able to help provide care to the whole person—physically, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and, of course, culturally.”
The nursing community, health care stakeholders, and the public must work together to improve gender opportunity in nursing. “There’s been a huge cultural expectation and assumption shift in the past 40 to 50 years,” says Brooks. “It used to be that most people assumed all nurses were women. Today, fewer people make that assumption. I think the Millennials and future generations will help continue to push for greater gender opportunity in all professions, not just nursing.”
Lecher agrees that more vocal support is needed, particularly from fellow nurses. More men and women nurses need to demand that the profession become more gender diverse and inclusive, he says. “It would be a mistake to think that men can solve gender recruitment and retention by themselves when women dominate the profession,” he adds.
“We have many women in nursing advocates for gender diversity. There are presently five women serving in the role of AAMN chapter presidents. A lot of nurses believe our membership is limited to men, but that is not the case,” says Lecher. “The truth is our women in nursing colleagues need to take a leadership role for such change, or our progress will continue to be glacial.”
Robin Farmer covers health, business, and education as a freelance journalist. Based in Virginia, she contributes frequently to Minority Nurse magazine and website. Visit her at www.RobinFarmerWrites.com.

Workplace Initiatives That Promote Diversity and Inclusion

Workplace Initiatives That Promote Diversity and Inclusion

As the United States becomes more of a melting pot, encouraging and nurturing a workplace that welcomes the different cultures, ethnicities, and lifestyles of staff are paramount to optimal collaboration, productivity, and success. In health care, where diversity increasingly is exemplified among patients as well as employees, such an embrace is critical to achieving best outcomes.

Health care institutions across the country are heeding the call for inclusion. Many have implemented initiatives to not only attract diverse staff, but also to keep and engage them.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for instance, launched the Multicultural Nurses Mayo Employee Resource Group (MNMERG) in July 2014 to recruit and retain nurses from diverse cultures and offer them professional support and networking opportunities. The MNMERG also mentors and educates Mayo’s diverse nurses and involves them in community programs.

With some 25 members, the MNMERG welcomes all Mayo staff. It meets monthly at the hospital, but this year will add quarterly dinners off site and is evaluating online technologies such as Skype and Sharepoint to “engage a 24/7 workforce,” says MNMERG cochair Deborah A. Delgado, MS, RN-BC, a nursing education specialist in psychiatry.

Mayo Employee Resource Groups (MERGs) have been an important component of Mayo’s overall diversity initiative; the goal is to have the following five core MERGs—African American, LGBTI, Hispanic, Disability, and Veterans—at Mayo’s three major clinical sites. Each MERG has an executive sponsor who is a leader at Mayo, but not a member of the group. For example, the MNMERG’s sponsor is a male cardiologist with experience in developing family/patient advisory groups. All of Mayo’s MERGs have formally chartered to align with at least one of the organization’s strategic diversity goals.

“These range from culturally competent care to inclusion and addressing health disparities,” says Sharonne N. Hayes, MD, FACC, FAHA, director of diversity and inclusion and professor of medicine at the Women’s Heart Clinic at Mayo. She notes that the groups share innovations and hold cross activities. “By that collaboration,” she says, “you get more hands to do the work obviously, but you also get a wonderful side product of some cross-cultural mentoring and some cross-cultural experience.”

While the MNMERG is in its infancy, feedback has been positive. “By being visible, by engaging, and by contributing, it just leads to retainment,” Delgado offers. “People want to stay because they’re able to use all of their gifts and talents to affect the organization’s purpose and goals.”

The Clinical Leadership Collaborative for Diversity in Nursing (CLCDN) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has realized recruitment and retention success with diverse students of nursing. A scholarship and mentoring program established in 2007 by Partners HealthCare (PHC), an integrated system of which Mass General is a member, the CLCDN draws applicants from the nursing program at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Students must demonstrate leadership qualities, have cumulative general and nursing GPAs of 3.0 or higher, and must be entering their junior year of study since the CLCDN will carry them through their senior year. They link with racially and ethnically diverse nurse mentors, attend unit meetings and social and educational events, and observe nurses and nursing leaders in action. Additionally, they receive a stipend and financial support for tuition and fees with the expectation they will pursue employment at a PHC institution after graduating.

“When you’re a minority and you’re going into an environment where you might be the only diverse person on your clinical unit, as an example, it can be really challenging; it can be very lonely,“ says Gaurdia E. Banister, PhD, RN, FAAN, the PHC CLCDN liaison to UMass Boston and executive director of the hospital’s Institute for Patient Care. “We wanted to put mechanisms in place to ensure the success of our students and, certainly once they graduated, the best possible [career] alternatives,” she says.

Mass General diverse nurse leaders who have successfully navigated such waters can “provide these wonderful, wonderful pearls of wisdom and support and encouragement and listening skills,” explains Banister, and they serve as mentors, as do CLCDN graduates. Of the 54 mentors to date (32 from Mass General), some are repeats. Other statistics are just as impressive—such as PHC’s 82.6% hiring rate among the 69 graduates thus far (47.8% of whom have been employed by Mass General) and the almost 80% retention rate for these graduates.

“They love being a nurse. It’s exactly what they anticipated their career to be,” says Banister. “They are constantly promoting how positive it has been for them and that they feel like our organizations are becoming much more of a welcoming and diverse place to work.”
At the Cleveland Clinic, location-specific Diversity Councils at each of the enterprise’s community hospitals and family health centers are effectively supporting and sustaining an inclusive work environment. These employee-led councils implement action plans and sponsor activities based on strategies and goals defined by an Executive Diversity Council, all aimed to enhance employee engagement and cultural competence.

While the Executive Diversity Council works “to set the tone and the agenda,” the location-specific councils “serve as the tactical team,” explains Diana Gueits, director of diversity and inclusion. The main-campus council, for one, formed the Nursing Cultural Competence Committee and the Disability Task Force; the task force, in turn, developed the Disability Etiquette Lunch ’n Learn, a program to assist caregivers in their interaction and communication with disabled individuals that has since been taken enterprise-wide. Gueits notes the councils share and cross-pollinate ideas.

Cleveland Clinic’s chief nursing officer sits on the Executive Diversity Council, and many nurses participate in the location-specific councils with several diverse nurses serving in leadership roles (the councils overall represent a cross-section of the clinic’s workforce). Two cochairs and a cochair-elect lead each council, act as local ambassadors for diversity, engage with executive leadership, and provide feedback to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which facilitates the business-like, SMART-goals approach of the councils.

“This is a passion for them,” says Gueits of the cochairs, who are selected based on their experience in leading transformative teams and their commitment to diversity and inclusion. “I think that what the councils provide them is an opportunity to see, to actually be part of an initiative and be part of that process from A to Z.”

Cleveland Clinic has 21 location-specific councils, a number that is sure to increase as the enterprise expands. “That is the intention,” Gueits says, “to make sure that we embed diversity and inclusion in our commitment to all our locations and give an opportunity or platform for all our caregivers to be engaged.”

Julie Jacobs is an award-winning writer with special interest and expertise in health care, wellness, and lifestyle. Visit her at www.wynnecommunications.com.

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